Alabama 713 articles

A whistleblower lawsuit against Gentiva Health Services unsealed July 10 alleges the company defrauded Medicare by misclassifying home health care patients as hospice patients in order to boost reimbursements. Alan Stewart, an Area Vice President with Gentiva, filed the complaint in 2014 under whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act. He alleges Gentiva launched a “new financial plan” in 2013 that involved recoding many patients receiving home health care as hospice patients, even when those patients did not require hospice services. According to McKnight’s, more than half of the patients who migrated from home health care to hospice care were ... Read More

A lawsuit has been filed against C.R. Bard over a fractured IVC filter on behalf of an Alabama woman who died after having been implanted with the filter. Effie R. has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Velvet R., who died after receiving a Denali inferior vena cava (IVC) filter, the Daily Hornet reports. Velvet received the IVC filter on Dec. 7, 2015, at a hospital within her state. The device was implanted to prevent blood clots from reaching her heart or lungs. The Denali is a fairly new model made by Bard, but is still known to have the same complications as the G2 and Recovery ... Read More

The family of a man killed in a flash fire at a car dealership has filed a wrongful death lawsuit, seeking justice for the loss of their loved one. According to The Mountain Eagle, on June 12, three workers were killed, one seriously injured, and another mildly injured as a result of a flash fire at Carl Cannon Chevrolet Buick GMC in Jasper, Alabama. Jake Jennings of Locust Fork was severely burned while working in the oil change pit of the dealership’s service department. At the age of 39, Jennings passed away the next day at UAB Hospital in Birmingham. The mother of ... Read More

The Alabama Supreme Court was asked by the Eleventh Circuit to decide whether claims made by a group of parents who allege a clinical trial caused their premature infants to suffer injuries could proceed on claims of lack of informed consent, Law360 reported. At issue with the Eleventh Circuit is whether the parents needed to prove the study caused their children’s injuries in order to sue for lack of informed consent over claims that the researchers did not fully disclose the study’s risks. The lawsuit was filed by the parents in 2013 and names lead researcher Dr. Waldemar Carlo; the ... Read More

Compounding pharmacy Medistat RX LLC, its CEO Mark Acker, production manager Timothy Finkling, and pharmacist-in-charge V. Elaine Waller were barred from making or distributing pharmaceuticals until they comply with federal law, an Alabama federal judge ordered, according to Law360. The pharmacy was accused by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of failing to clean up microbial contamination in its sterile areas, which led to a 2015 outbreak of staph infections. The Rhode Island Department of Health traced the outbreak to drugs compounded by the pharmacy. The FDA promptly investigated the situation and found that Medistat’s own documents had pinpointed several ... Read More

Alopecia is the medical term for hair loss. The most common form of alopecia is androgenetic alopecia, or pattern baldness. This hereditary hair loss affects both men and women and is progressive. Alopecia areata is also fairly common. It is an autoimmune disorder that causes patchy hair loss on the scalp, face and sometimes other areas of the body. Traction alopecia is caused by hair styles that pull excessively on the hair shafts and damage hair follicles. A more rare form of hair loss is called cicatricial alopecia, or scarring alopecia. This actually refers to many different types of hair ... Read More

The captivating and often annoying fidget spinners have been causing quite a stir lately with reports of children swallowing parts and getting the toys stuck on their fingers – both of which have required medical attention. But when Kimberly Allums of Garendale, Alabama, ran dashing into her son’s room after hearing him scream, the last thing she expected was to see the fidget spinner bursting into flames. Many of the devices are operated by hand, but the Allumses’ fidget spinner was battery operated and came with a charger. Her son’s toy had been charging for only 45 minutes when it erupted ... Read More

Two people were hospitalized for injuries they suffered on an American Eagle flight that had to make an emergency landing in Selma, Alabama, June 21. The passengers were traveling on American Airlines Flight 5559 from New Orleans to Washington D.C. when the cockpit and cabin began to fill with a burning odor. The plane was carrying 65 passengers and four crewmembers. “They told us it was a malfunction with the brakes and that they saw smoke outside,” passenger Shavonne Bowman told WSFA Montgomery. “My heart started racing. I started praying, and I just followed the instructions.” The American Eagle plane ... Read More

Alopecia areata has been chosen by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be the focus of a public meeting under the Patient-Focused Drug Development initiative. Alopecia areata is an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss on the scalp, face and sometimes other areas of the body. There is no cure, but there are a variety of treatments that may help with hair regrowth. It is one of the at least 20 disease areas that will have similar meetings designed to get the patients’ perspectives on their disease and on current treatment options. According to the Federal Register, “the ... Read More

Alabama prescribes more opioid pain killers than any other state in the country, doling out more prescriptions in the for the deadly pills than there are people in the state to take them, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama released a statement this week saying it was taking action to help address the problem in Alabama. According to a new national report focused on the opioid epidemic and its effects on commercially insured Americans, a quarter of Alabama’s commercially insured members filled at least one opioid prescription in 2015 ... Read More